None could have any doubts as to the meaning of those parting words. The crown was quite obviously young Louis. And who could the virgin be if not Maria Mancini?
"The allusion to the virgin, in particular, seemed to refer clearly to Maria, whom the King never knew: carnally, I mean."
"Really?" I exclaimed in surprise.
"No one believed that, except for myself, obviously, well aware as I was of the extreme innocence of their love, and the Cardinal who was kept informed of every minute of the young King's life. When Maria arrived in Rome and married the Constable Colonna, the latter confided in me not long after their wedding that he had found her to be a virgin and, being aware of what had passed between her and the King of France, had been frankly amazed by that."
If the marriage between the virgin and the crown were to be concluded, according to Capitor's warning, someone would pay with his life. And, seeing that the prophecy was aimed at Cardinal Mazarin, Maria's tutor and Louis's godfather, and thus arbiter of the destiny of the twain, it was easy to imagine that it was precisely his end that was being predicted, indeed even augured.
Proffered by anyone else, Capitor's words might have seemed mere harmless ravings. In the mouth of that being with her arcane faculties of divination, they sounded all too like the voice of the Black Lady with the ineluctable scythe.
"It is not easy to explain here and now, forty years later," said the
Abbot. "When that ugly being opened her mouth, it set one a-shivering. Yet everyone laughed: the foolish because they were amused, the others, out of nervousness."
Atto, too, during Capitor's mad liturgy, had felt the touch of fear. He, too, had taken part, albeit passively and marginally, in the staging of the show for Mazarin.
Meanwhile, the wind had risen and the sky, which had hitherto been immaculate, seemed to have grown slightly darker.
"You yourself, Signor Atto, told me that Capitor was suspected of speaking as if she had been inspired to by the Spaniards who wanted a marriage between Louis and the Infanta and were consequently hostile to Maria Mancini. If that were the case, Capitor's message would have been, how can one put it?…"
"A perfectly normal threat for political ends? 'Tis true, there were those who saw it in those terms; but I believe that His Eminence was by no means so sure of it. The fact is that, from that moment on, Mazarin's attitude to Maria and the King changed sharply: no sooner had Don John the Bastard departed with his madwoman than the Cardinal became the most bitter enemy of the love between the two young people. There was, however, something else: Capitor called the dish by a Greek name: a word which you too now know."
"Do you mean?…"
"Tetrachion."
I was so caught up in the narration that I had almost failed to notice the curious phenomenon which had been taking place for the past few minutes: a sudden, bizarre change in climate, which had also occurred the day before in the very same place.
The wind, which was at first moderate, had found new vigour. The cirrus clouds which had quite unexpectedly begun to darken the vault of heaven swiftly gathered, by now forming a bank, then a cumulus. A powerful gust raised dead leaves and dust from the ground, forcing us to protect our eyes for fear of being blinded. As on the day before, we had to lean against a tree if we were not to lose our balance.
It lasted no more than a few instants. Hardly had the singular little squall blown over than the daylight seemed more joyful and free. With our hands we brushed down our dusty clothes as best we could. I raised my eyes to the sun and was more dazzled than I expected: there was hardly any difference between the light now and when we had left Villa Spada. "What curious weather there sometimes is here," commented Atto.
"Now I understand," I said. "The first time that you mentioned the Vessel to me you said that there were objects here."
"Good. Your memory is correct."
"Capitor's gifts," I added.
He did not reply. He was moving towards the front door.
"'Tis open," he commented.
Someone had entered the Vessel. Or, said I to myself, had gone out from there.
As we were crossing the hall on the ground floor, we heard the notes of the music which had greeted us on our first visit, the folia. I, meanwhile, had inevitably been besieging Atto with further questions.
"Pardon me, but why do you think that Capitor's gifts are here?"
"That is partly a matter of concrete fact, partly deduction, but there are no two ways about it."
Capitor's obscure prediction, Atto explained, circulated at lightning speed through court. No one had the courage to record it in writing, for it was said that the Cardinal had been terrified by it. Even the most meticulous of memorialists preferred to pass over the matter in silence, for their memoirs were made to be circulated and read at court, not to remain clandestine.
Yet, silence was not enough. Mazarin was already obsessed by the problem of how to retain power at the expense of the young King Louis who was bound, sooner or later, to cause him problems, and this he knew full well. After Capitor's dark prophecy, the Cardinal was beset nightly by new, black phantasms.
"As I have already told you," Atto stressed, not without irony, "the Cardinal had always been sure that his life would be long, very long."
Desperately attached to worldly glories, like a mollusc to its rock, he had ended up by confusing that rock with life itself, while it was life that gave him the strength to close up his shell.
"Remember, my boy, great statesmen are like mussels attached to a reef. They look upon the fishes darting here and there and think: poor wretches, they're both lost and aimless, without a fine rock to bite into. But if the thought should once come to them that they may have one day to become detached from the rock, they are terrified. And they are utterly unaware that they are prisoners of their rock."
Obviously, those words did not express the thoughts of a faithful servant of Mazarin, as Atto had been forty years before. Nor did they fit in with that natural tendency of his to hunger and thirst after glory, a tendency with which I was so very familiar. These were other cogitations, those of one who has come to the last stage in life and who is measuring himself up against the same problem as that which beset Mazarin until his last hour: whether the bivalve's shell must open up and let go of the rock.
"Was that you?" said he.
"Signor Atto, what do you mean?"
"No, you are right, it came from outside," said he, moving towards one of the windows giving onto the entry courtyard.
I followed him and looked out too: there was nothing to be seen.
"It was like… someone running and kicking up gravel, or dirt," said Atto.
Then, almost merging into the notes of the folia, I heard it too. It was just like footsteps running down an avenue, the avenue whence we had come. They came and went. Then they ceased.
"Shall we go out?" I proposed.
"No. I do not know how long we can remain in here. Before leaving, I must be sure of one thing."
We took the winding spiral staircase that led to the first floor.
Meanwhile, Atto continued his tale. Mazarin could not bear that miserable state for long. He had lost the omnipotent confidence which had guided and sustained him ever since he had defeated the Fronde revolt. He feared the future: an unfamiliar and ungovernable feeling. In his hands, he held those objects, Capitor's gifts, and everyone knew that. Almost as though these were stolen goods, getting rid of them would be far from simple. In order not to have them always before his eyes, he had them stowed away in a chest.
Of that tale, he had spoken with no one. He did not want to think of it; yet, he thought of it unceasingly. He had never paid much attention to the evil eye, despite his Sicilian ancestry, but if anything was under a curse, he thought, those three trinkets were.